


Newly Human

by FluffyBeaumont



Category: Dark Shadows (1966)
Genre: Anal Sex, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Falling In Love, Forgiveness, Guilt, Humanity, Immortality, Kissing, Love, M/M, Redemption, Sleeping Together, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:00:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27770392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FluffyBeaumont/pseuds/FluffyBeaumont
Summary: Barnabas, fully human now, is finding it difficult to transition to the world of the living. Luckily, he has Willie by his side to help him.
Relationships: Barnabas Collins/Napoleon Bonaparte (implied), Barnabas Collins/Willie Loomis
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Newly Human

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EustasiaVye13](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EustasiaVye13/gifts).



> Barnabas meeting -- and making love with -- a young Napoleon is non-canon and entirely my own invention.

After two hundred years, sleep proved to be the hardest thing for him to conquer.

That, and the human predilection for eating. This proved necessary, however, as he soon found out when he went three days all together without taking sustenance. The pangs of hunger were unpleasant, but soon passed. However, when he lost consciousness one morning while bathing --

His dignity would never recover from _that_ particular wound. But the vagaries of the modern age hadn’t proved quite so daunting after all; even the more difficult and complex yielded to patience and persistence. Willie was teaching him how to operate a motorcar, and he could handle conversations on the telephone with ease.

The morning after his return to full humanity he’d witnessed his first sunrise in more than two centuries. It had made him weep, real tears, not the bloody facsimile he’d grown used to. A tiny part of him whispered that crying over something as quotidian as a sunrise was beneath him--he was a Collins, for Christ’s sake. But he didn’t care. The sunrise was a momentous thing, and he would allow himself to see it, to feel all the things he was feeling, and he would not be ashamed.

“Barnabas?” Willie appeared at his elbow. Ever since the vampire’s re-emergence into full humanity, Willie had become something of a guardian angel, staying close to Barnabas but doing so unobtrusively. He was always within call if Barnabas required anything. Indeed, he seemed to anticipate Barnabas’s needs and fill them. It was an extraordinary level of dedication from someone whom Barnabas had abused and, on more than one occasion, very nearly destroyed.

“I’m all right, Willie.” He turned slightly, so Willie could hear his voice, but not far enough that the other man could see the sheen of tears on his cheeks. “You’re up early.”

“I heard you moving around. You didn’t sleep too much last night.” Willie moved closer and allowed his hand to rest for just a moment on Barnabas’s shoulder. “Finding it hard to sleep, ain’t ya?”

Barnabas turned fully, nodding. “Yes. I’m unaccustomed to it…as I am to many things.” His brow creased. Now that he was human, his expressions came and went, flickering across a face that was striking rather than handsome, with huge, haunted dark eyes and thick lashes. It was an 18th-century face, the face of a nobleman who was now the only surviving member of an aristocratic family...or as near as the New World got to an aristocracy, in any case.

”I made breakfast.” Willie smiled. “Your favourite.”

The corner of Barnabas’s mouth quirked into a half smile. “I’ve barely been human a week. How could you possibly know what my favourite anything is?”

“I’ve been with you a long time, Barnabas. I learned a few things.” Willie let his hand drop. “Come on. Let’s get something to eat.”

They sat together in the rarely used dining room and ate the breakfast Willie had prepared. He was, Barnabas had to admit, a good cook. It had been a long time since Barnabas had enjoyed any of these foods, so reintroducing them to his palate took a little courage and a great deal of his innate curiosity. Today there were sausages, and fresh fruit, and something Willie called ‘French toast’, bread dipped in egg and fried, with maple syrup from Canada, as well as a pot of strong, delicious coffee.

“What do you like best about eating?” Willie asked, during a pause in the meal.

Barnabas thought for a moment. “Getting to taste everything all over again,” he said. “I had quite forgotten what food tasted like…the texture…the weight of it in my mouth, the feel against my teeth.”

“Anything you like in particular?” Willie asked. He’d finished his meal and pushed the plate back, poured himself a second cup of coffee and added ample amounts of sugar and cream. He was bright eyed this morning, and he looked well-rested and handsome, comfortable in his skin. Not for the first time, Barnabas realised how handsome he was, how physically appealing.

“Wine, I think.” Barnabas nodded at Willie’s coffee cup. “But coffee is also much to my taste. I like the taste of salt, like—” He broke off. It wasn’t blood he was after. He would never taste blood again. No, it wasn’t the taste of blood, it was--

Willie was looking at him strangely. “You okay, Barnabas?”

“Perfectly.” He wasn’t. The memory was powerful, perfectly cogent, of a hot summer night in a small city in an island outpost of France. He’d played cards with a young army general who cheated unashamedly, laughed when he was caught, and gave Barnabas back his money with no argument. Later, they strolled in the town’s main square, flirting gently, until their burgeoning desire demanded swift release. They lay together on the beach and made love with the sound of the sea lapping at the sand. Barnabas had taken his companion’s cock into his mouth and sucked him to release, and the taste of salt--

He blinked, willing the memory away. “Thank you, Willie. Breakfast was excellent.” He rose from the table and hurried away before another memory could overtake him, destroying his peace.

Barnabas kept himself busy until the evening meal, when Willie served them both hot soup with crusty bread and strong cheese. For dessert there was a platter of grapes and a dish of honey, and afterwards Barnabas poured two measures of cognac into snifters, handing one to Willie. “I drank cognac with him that night in Ajaccio,” he mused, swirling the amber liquid in his glass. “At the time, I didn’t realise…no one did. That he would go on to conquer the world.”

“Who?” Willie asked quietly. They’d taken their brandy into the sitting room and were sitting opposite each other in the matching wing chairs Barnabas had sent Willie to Bangor to buy some weeks before. It was a cold late November evening and Willie had lit a fire, stoked it to a blaze with dry birch logs. Even though they’d had electricity installed in the Old House some months before, they both preferred candlelight and fire in the evenings. Barnabas had never bothered to purchase a television set, and Willie hadn’t asked for one. They spent their evenings reading in a companionable silence, Barnabas surprised by Willie’s appetite for fine literature. He read everything Barnabas recommended, and introduced the former vampire to some of the fine authors of the current age.

“Bonaparte.” Barnabas smiled at the memory of the gawky, long-haired young general, so proud of his uniform, and overbrimming with ideas to reform the country – reform the world.

“You knew Napoleon?”

“Briefly.” 

“What was he like?” Willie asked.

Barnabas sipped his cognac. “Not at all as history paints him. He was…erudite…handsome…intelligent. He read voraciously, could converse on any subject. Athletic, supple…” Barnabas raised his gaze to Willie. “Sensual to a fault.”

Willie’s body jerked slightly, righted itself. He swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing in the strong column of his throat. “Yeah?”

“Yes.” He waited while Willie processed this. “Willie, I need to talk to you about something which has been weighing on my conscience for a while now.”

“Sure, Barnabas.” Willie took a healthy swallow of his cognac, flushed violently, recovered. “Whatever you need.”

Barnabas laid down his glass and stood up. He wandered to one of the windows and looked out. Sometime during the evening, it had started raining, a heavy rain, laden with sleet. “When you initially released me from my… _confinement_ , I was a being out of time,” he said. “I was forced to adapt to a world not of my choosing. And I had to do so with an enormous handicap, if you will excuse the word.” He paused, a space of silence that stretched into several long moments. “Now I am just like anyone else. I will age. This body will die. _Finally._ I will be permitted the solace of the grave. I’m mortal, Willie. Just like you, like Julia, like everyone else. Lately I find my thoughts turning more and more to the subject of my mortality, and I am conscious of…” He drank the last of the cognac. “…all of my transgressions.” Without warning, his eyes were full of tears. “Are you listening?”

“I’m listening, Barnabas.”

“I treated you perhaps the worst of anyone. Willie, I was…the way I…what I mean to say is…I treated you abominably. I was cruel to you. I beat you. I did my very best to destroy you utterly. I very nearly succeeded.” 

“That wasn’t you, Barnabas. That was the curse, the demon in your skull. It was never you.”

The calm reassurance in Willie’s voice ripped a jagged gash in his soul. “What are you saying, Willie?”

“I forgive you, Barnabas. Hell, I forgave you a long time ago. It was never your fault. It was Angelique, that goddamn curse she put on you. It was never you.” Willie came to where he was and stood close to Barnabas, so close that the vampire could feel the heat of his body. “You need to understand that.”

Barnabas sighed. “I think I’ll go to bed.” His hand strayed to Willie’s shoulder, squeezing gently. At the last moment he spread his fingers, reaching to caress the side of Willie’s face. “Good night, Willie. I hope you sleep well.”

“Goodnight, Barnabas.” Willie watched him go up the stairs, then returned to his chair before the fire. He sipped the fine cognac slowly, enjoying the mellow burn of it on his tongue and down his throat. The things Barnabas had said chased themselves through his mind, ribbons of words that morphed into a certain realisation before dissolving into the haze the cognac was making in his brain. The touch of the vampire’s fingers had left a haptic imprint on his skin, and he wondered what would have happened if he’d arched into that touch, invited it, asked for more.

He picked up a volume of Dickens he’d been reading and settled back into his chair as the wind slapped a handful of sleet against the window. One more chapter and he’d go to bed. He needed to go into Portland in the morning, do some shopping, and maybe Barnabas would let him take the car. Maybe Barnabas would want to come with him.

He must have dozed, for the next thing he knew there was a pronounced creak on the stairs and Barnabas was there, looking pale and shame-faced, altogether human in a pair of cotton pajama trousers and a grey t-shirt. “Willie?”

He started up in the chair, laying the book aside. “Right here, Barnabas. What do you need?”

“Willie, I…don’t remember how to fall asleep.” He raised his hands and let them drop to his sides. “I’m cold. I can’t decide how to position my body in the bed, I don’t—”

Willie was on his feet, reaching for him, rushing to comfort him. “It’s okay, Barnabas. I’ll show you. Come on. We’ll go up together, you n’ me, okay?”

He blew out the candles and banked the fire up for the night, then followed the vampire upstairs to the big, four-poster bed in the master bedroom. There was a fire in the fireplace, a buttress against the late November chill, and the duvet was turned back. “I get in and I lie down but I don’t know what to do!” Barnabas’s dark brows creased in frustration. “How do you fall asleep? What do you do?”

“It’s okay,” Willie murmured. “Go on, you get into bed.” He switched off the small bedside lamp, plunging the room into darkness save for the glow of the fire. Barnabas climbed under the duvet and lay on his side facing Willie and the room, one hand wedged underneath his pillow. He looked tired and, in the light from the fire, startlingly human. Willie stripped to his underwear, dropping his shed clothing onto a nearby chair, then climbed into bed beside Barnabas. “Turn around,” he said. “Put your back to me.” Barnabas did as Willie asked, and Willie wrapped his arms around the vampire’s waist, cuddling close to him, sharing his body heat. “Just relax,” Willie murmured. “I’m here with ya. Everything’s okay. Just let go. Don’t think of nothing.” It was a technique he’d used many times himself, when he was overwrought and in deep psychic pain, far beyond the reach of ordinary comfort.

They drowsed, clinging together, and after a while Barnabas murmured something and turned onto his back, invited Willie back into his embrace. “Would you…” He paused. “Willie, would you touch me? My skin, I would like—”

Willie slid a hand under the vampire’s t-shirt, palm flat against the muscled chest, measuring the other man’s heartbeats. After a while, emboldened by their closeness, he pressed his open mouth against the smooth skin of Barnabas’s neck and holding himself there, before touching the very tip of his tongue to the space under the vampire’s ear. Barnabas grunted and his long spine flexed, raising his hips. “You want me to stop, you tell me,” Willie whispered. Barnabas said nothing, merely clasped a hand around Willie’s neck to pull him close, and then he was capturing Willie’s mouth with his own and the kiss was liquid fire.

They clasped each other tightly, hands roving everywhere, as mouths met and parted, met again, Willie’s tongue slipping between the vampire’s parted lips to taste him. Barnabas rolled onto his back and sighed, “Ahhh, God, Willie…” then sat up, slipping out of his t-shirt, baring his chest to Willie’s hands and his mouth. He keened aloud when Willie circled first one nipple then the other with the tip of his tongue, coaxing each nub of flesh to hardness before moving down to slip his hands beneath the waistband of the loose cotton pants. Barnabas lifted his hips, allowing Willie to slip the pants down and off, and then Willie’s underpants were gone and they were naked – finally – with each other, bodies meshing in the taut silence of the vampire’s bedroom.

It was sweaty bliss, skin against skin, Willie’s cock pressing against Barnabas’s flat belly as they moved together, gasping, kissing, groaning. “So beautiful,” Barnabas murmured, as Willie sat back on his heels, his swollen cock rising out of its nest of dark-blond hair. “You’re so beautiful. My God, Willie, I want you. I have always wanted you.”

“Then you're gonna have me,” Willie said. “But first you’d better make me ready. Do you have anything?”

“I believe so.” Barnabas rummaged in the drawer of the bedside table and drew out a small brown bottle. “Willie, are you certain? I have hurt you so much during these intervening years, I would never willingly hurt you, ever again.”

In answer Willie lay back on the bed and let his knees fall open, exposing his tender entrance and the smooth rounds of his buttocks. “You ain’t gonna hurt me,” he said. “Please, Barnabas. I want this.” He felt a warming sensation as Barnabas worked the oil into him, soothing him, exciting him, making him ready, until he was a taut-strung bundle of nerves, begging Barnabas to fuck him.

He grunted when the vampire’s hard cock breached the tight ring of muscle, forcing himself to relax and let Barnabas in. Then Barnabas was deep inside of him, fully sheathed in the blood warmth of his body. “You’re so tight,” the vampire gasped, holding himself up on his arms. “For God’s sake, don’t move an inch. If you do, this shall all be over in an instant.”

_He is inside me,_ Willie thought. _Oh Christ, he’s in me…and I just want—I want--_ A shard of pleasure lanced through him, so intense it felt like it would slice him wide open, and the night fractured into planes of light and dark as Barnabas moved above him, pounding into him. His body was suffused with sensation so powerful that it obliterated him, as the base of his spine tingled and then he was there--

\--coming hard, spending his release in violent bursts that ravaged him, tearing him apart. He threw his head back and gave himself up to it, and then Barnabas was there, his face twisted by the onslaught of his pleasure, mouth wide open in a glorious rictus of ecstasy as he throbbed his essence deep into Willie’s body before collapsing down onto him, completely spent.

They clung together, gasping, bodies twitching through powerful aftershocks, and eventually Willie turned his face to kiss him. There were no words, not yet, and perhaps not for a while, because this was too profound and far too sacred to sully with mere language. They curled together, twinned bodies silent, waiting, listening, Willie wrapped securely in his lover’s arms, at peace and satisfied. _I love you,_ he thought, and there was no need to even speak the words aloud because Barnabas understood.

He understood.


End file.
